Digging the dirt

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From friendship to fallout, the documentary Dig!
charts two bands' divergent career paths, writes Craig
Mathieson.

In June, in a darkened cinema at the Los Angeles Film Festival,
Matt Hollywood watched himself kick a close friend in the head,
quit the group he played bass for in the middle of a gig and be
physically attacked by his band manager - among various other
rock'n'roll "moments".

"I was sitting in the midst of 1000 people," recalls the
31-year-old, "watching my youth unfold on the screen, hearing the
crowd gasp or laugh at incidents I was involved in. It was, I would
have to say, rather odd."

What's truly odd is that the bespectacled Hollywood emerges as
the level-headed, comparatively sedate member of his dysfunctional
former band.

Throughout Dig!, Ondi Timoner's fascinating documentary
that depicts the contrasting fortunes of once good friends the
Dandy Warhols and Hollywood's group, the Brian Jonestown Massacre,
it's the bizarre behaviour of Hollywood's bandmate, Anton Newcombe,
that stands out.

Possessed of a hair-trigger temper and given to extended bursts
of monomaniacal energy, Newcombe made himself known to Australian
audiences this year when he brought the latest incarnation of the
band (he's the only remaining original member, hiring and firing
backing musicians with alarming regularity) here for a brief but
chaotic tour.

Alternately chastising his group or the audience, Newcombe would
harangue those present for at least 10 minutes before launching
into each song.

"I heard some stories about that tour," says the softly spoken
Hollywood. "Apparently you got Anton at his very worst on those
shows. He's actually not always like that."

Hollywood was 18 when he first met Newcombe in 1990. An aspiring
artist, he'd moved to San Francisco to study, but his bass rig and
the Stone Roses poster on the wall of his room caught the eye of
"this greasy-haired, wild-eyed cat in a parka". That was Newcombe,
who knocked on the window and then asked Hollywood to join a band
he was forming.

Having emotionally decompressed from his time in the Brian
Jonestown Massacre, Hollywood moved to Portland, the Dandy Warhols'
home town, on the north of the Pacific coast - "It was the only
place I knew people who weren't strung out or dangerously insane,"
says Hollywood - where the bassist has come to terms with his time
living, writing and playing alongside Newcombe.

"I've witnessed Anton be the most charming, articulate, caring
person you could ever meet, and then become the nastiest, most
vicious person you would never want to meet," he says. "The film,
to be honest, captures both those sides of him."

Hollywood (above, in the film) is proud of the band's extensive
output, a collection of 1960s-influenced tracks that move between
pure pop jams and psychedelic noise jags that have bestowed cult
status on the Brian Jonestown Massacre.

Just as impressed was Courtney Taylor, frontman of the Dandy
Warhols. Taylor narrates Dig! and, even after the
restraining orders and the "gift" of shotgun shells with his name
on them, he describes Newcombe as "the most talented musician I
have ever met".

Timoner shot 1500 hours of footage between 1996 and 2003 to
document how the two bands fell out and followed opposing career
trajectories.

The film, which screens at the Australian Centre for the Moving
Image as part of Resfest 2004 this weekend, plays as a mix of high
drama and absurdist farce.

It has a supporting cast of frightened music execs, while
several Dandy Warhols' hit singles - Not If You Were The Last
Junkie On Earth and We Used To Be Friends - are
revealed as Taylor's musical barbs for Newcombe.

Quotable lines leap out - "I sneeze and hits come out," hisses
Taylor at one point, following a disagreement with his record label
- but there's no doubt the two songwriters are inextricably linked.
It's an obsessive relationship where the protege ended up
commercially outstripping his mentor, with the narrative moving
from the Dandy Warhols headlining an outdoor festival in Europe to
the Brian Jonestown Massacre playing to 10 people at the Communist
Party HQ in Cleveland.

If the pair are still at odds, Matt Hollywood is at ease with
both his past and Dig!'s feuding protagonists.

Taylor recently remixed a track by Hollywood's new band, the Out
Crowd, while the latter also supported the Brian Jonestown Massacre
on a recent trip to Portland. Hollywood even filled in on bass at
one show. "It was fun," he sighs. "To play with Anton again, for
just one night, was enjoyable."

Matt Hollywood and the Dandy Warhols' Brent de Boer
introduce a screening of Dig! at ACMI Cinemas, Federation
Square, city, tomorrow at 9pm, as part of Resfest. The film will be
have a limited release on April 14 next year.